After Quake, Schools Learn to Do Without

Algebra students at Monroe High School in the mid-San Fernando Valley used one-page work sheets last week because their soggy textbooks were worthless. Science students at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies had textbooks but no Bunsen burners, beakers or microscopes.

Instead of working with paints and clay in their damaged art building, seventh-graders at San Fernando Middle School were reduced to drawing with pencils in a chilly classroom.

Throughout the Los Angeles area, the story is the same. Nearly all schools have reopened, but the Jan. 17 earthquake left many campuses without enough textbooks, crayons, paper and equipment. Teachers and students are trying to make do, often in makeshift classrooms without heat and still shaking with aftershocks.

Teachers are redesigning their courses to compensate for damaged books and missing supplies, borrowing from each other and using their own money to acquire enough learning materials to get by.

“We beg, borrow and steal,” said Cindy Keyser, a mathematics teacher at Monroe. “We’ll take anything we can get our hands on. It’s survival.”

At many campuses, especially in the San Fernando Valley, faculty members returned to work to find the contents of filing cabinets, desks and closets strewn everywhere. Course materials collected over decades were destroyed by water from ruptured lines. Big-ticket features of the modern classroom--computers, TVs and VCRs--were destroyed over a wide area.

The problem is particularly bad in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where money for supplies and materials has been dwindling for several years. In many schools, textbooks were years behind and equipment was in short supply before the quake. Many school officials say the campuses will replace lost or damaged items but that it will take time.

To help schools replenish their supplies and instructional materials, the district has allocated most campuses $5 per student. About 190 schools that were hardest hit with quake damage have been allocated $15 per student. Textbook money will come separately from grants the school district expects to receive from the federal government, but obtaining the books will take time.

“There is no doubt that this is going to have a devastating and long-term effect on our schools,” said Henry Jones, the district’s budget director. “There is money to recover some of the losses but some schools may have to start all over.”

“It’ll be some time before schools return to where they were before the earthquake,” Jones said.

At Monroe High School in North Hills, 1,200 textbooks were destroyed when overhead pipes burst, sending three inches of water gushing through classrooms. The school lost its entire set of German texts and most English composition, math and world history books. Charts and posters were drenched and stacks of computer paper and copying paper were destroyed.

“In many cases, we couldn’t afford to buy sufficient textbooks for all the math classes, so they shared,” said Principal Joan Elam. “Now they can’t share anything.”

Some of the school’s buildings are also unusable. Auto shop students hunched over desks looking at work sheets rather than building race cars last week because the shop building was declared unsafe.

“This is so boring,” said Jasen Heggemeier, 17, a junior. “We can’t do anything in here. We want to be working on our cars.”

Glen Werdon, the auto shop teacher, said he understands the students’ feelings and would prefer being in the shop building. “It’s just not the same,” he said. “These kids really miss working with their hands.”

Across campus, students sat huddled in down jackets and parkas listening to a teacher who held the room’s lone English textbook and wrote instructions on the chalkboard. Greg Messigian, Monroe’s special education department chairman, said every English book was destroyed when the room was flooded. The room still has no heat.

“The hardest part of all of this is the loss of books,” Messigian said. “I have to do everything on the board. It slows the learning process.

One teacher, Patti Leppla, gave up on teaching English composition one day and tried to show a videotape called “The Incredible Human Machine.” But the tape had gotten wet and was unusable.

“Well, I think we’ll have to do something else,” she told her students.

Other Southern California school districts also were hard hit by the quake. Television sets and computers were shaken off their stands in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. Though some materials were lost in the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita, officials said they had been preparing for two years for an earthquake.

“We feel that we really dodged a bullet here,” said Gary Wexler, the district’s curriculum director. “We had planned and prepared.”

The district had secured its science laboratories, built special storage containers and cabinets and cleaned out shelves of old textbooks and supplies. As a result, the schools suffered only minor losses of science equipment.

By contrast, the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies in the Mid-Wilshire district lost most of its science materials. San Fernando Middle School science teachers do not know what is lost because they have not been allowed to enter their damaged classrooms.

“We’re trying not to shortchange the kids, but science is a lab class and it’s hard to do it in a non-lab situation,” said Rick Marqusee, the science department chairman at San Fernando. “Teaching is more than just showing up for a class, lecturing and reading from a book. It’s activities, pulling things off a shelf, working with things,” he said.

The science teachers at San Fernando Middle School, usually a close-knit group, are now spread across the campus. One teaches in a mechanical arts room, another in a portable classroom and another in a cooking classroom.

None are doing lab work, and few have their supplies from the classrooms. “It’s like living out of a suitcase: You can do it for a day or two, but after that the novelty has worn off and it becomes difficult--you need more things,” Marqusee said.

Seventh-grade art students at San Fernando worked last week in a dimly lit classroom without water. The students made pencil drawings of the earthquake, many showing faces with open mouths and others with burning houses. Some asked the teacher how they could show shaking beds and moving walls.

Teacher Louise Bache said she had been in her classroom for 25 years and now was unable to use the room. She is unsure how her collections of art books and videotapes made it through the earthquake.

“There are things that can’t be replaced,” she said. “We will just do things differently. We won’t do any painting. No papier-mache projects and collages. It’s hard to plan.”

The school’s social studies and English classroom building also is unusable, and those classes have been dispersed throughout the campus. Last week, three classes used the auditorium--one on the stage and two in different parts of the room.

Other schools have no gymnasiums for physical education classes because they are being used as Red Cross shelters. At Canoga Park High School, about 1,000 people have been living in the gym. The outdoor basketball court has been turned into a parking lot--with delivery trucks pulling in and out, and cars and pickup trucks lining the soccer field.

“I think when it’s all said and done, most schools lost a great deal,” said Larry Higgins, principal of Canoga Park High. “It’s going to be quite extensive. We won’t know for a while what happened to our gym floor and soccer field.”

Audubon Middle School in the Crenshaw area lost books and computer equipment when two water lines burst. Volunteers--including parents, bus drivers and clerical staff--used hair dryers to try to salvage books.

Principal Travis Kiel said he had just ordered new textbooks but they had not been delivered.

“Thank goodness these brand new books hadn’t gotten here,” Kiel said. “As you picked up some of these books, they just fell apart in your hands.

“It will take us a couple of years--at least--to recover,” he said. “We will be using a lot of ditto sheets and copying chapters of books. Kids won’t be able to take books home every night.”

Schools are assessing the damage and will make reports to the district in the next few weeks. Most school officials say they still are discovering items missing or destroyed.

“Every day we realize something else we can’t use,” said Rosemary Enzer, principal of Danube Avenue Elementary School in Granada Hills. “But we’re just trying to make do with what we have.”

* MUDSLIDES FEARED: After two more aftershocks, a big storm approaches. B1